title: A comprehensive investigation of putative correlates of bulimia among college-age women: object relations, dependency, ego defenses, trait anxiety, and depression.
abstract: This study investigated putative correlates of bulimia, which included measures of object relations impairment, dependency, ego defenses, trait anxiety and depression. Subjects were college-age women drawn from a larger sample (n = 417) and selected on the basis of their scores on the revised version of the Bulimia Test. The bulimia group was composed of those scoring in the top 5% (n = 23), concordant with the base rate of bulimia in this population, whereas controls (n = 23) were conservatively selected from those scoring around the mean (56th-61st percentile). A multivariate analysis of variance revealed a significant group difference across dependent variables (p < .05), and univariate Fs uniformly demonstrate predicted group differences. A stepwise discriminant analysis was performed to assess the relative contribution of these variables toward the differentiation between psychometrically defined, bulimic and nonbulimic women, revealing that trait anxiety, dependency, and depression reliably differentiated these groups, accounting for 37% of between-groups variance. In replicating and extending prior research, the results have implications for elucidating the phenomenology and potential etiologic factors associated with bulimia and for informing treatment and future research.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, State University of New York, College at Buffalo 14222, USA.
authors.forename: M J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Zborowski
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology*; D002032:Bulimia / Q000523:psychology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D003858:Dependency, Psychological; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology*; D016002:Discriminant Analysis; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D009769:Object Attachment